


once upon a five times  (or: five things that never happened to elijah wood)

by Hope



Category: Real Person Slash, The Faculty RPS, lotrips
Genre: Multi, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-04-02
Updated: 2004-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:13:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,444
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hope/pseuds/Hope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/22341.html</p></blockquote>





	once upon a five times  (or: five things that never happened to elijah wood)

1.

seven hours and debbie has had enough of being snowed-in; has had enough of exchanging barbed words and claws delivered in emphatic whispers, so when warren uses one of zach's sleeping whimpers to momentarily escape, she decides to dig her way out.

the snow is so white it's almost blue in the crisp light, filtered through the trees as the sun sinks inexorably towards the horizon. the shovel slides cleanly into the white blanket at her first downward heave, the smooth movement only serving to make her grit her teeth harder, bitterness and regret and anger pressing in at her temples.

she's sticky with sweat in her winter coat by the time she's cleared the first yard or so in front of the garage, not even enough to open the doors, the violence of her movement reverberating up through her arms with scrape against the gleaming black stone hidden beneath the white.

when she takes another step forward and drives the shovel down again, hard, it takes the sight of the red skirt seeping rich heavy from where she stands and into the white to realises what has happened. the colours are bright and stark in contrast. she smiles.

*

elijah is born in winter, hair dark against debbie's pinioning clean white sheets and eyes screwed tight, face screwed tight and screaming, red; his beauty as determined and emphatic as debbie's will.

_shame their eyes change_, warren says as he stands awkwardly, mesmerised anew by the tiny fists and jerking limbs.

* * *

2.

josh is the saviour, providing the cast with a heart-throb archetype to compliment the rest of their breakfast club grand buffet. there's so much invested in this film; the fashion label and the williamson label, a venture for the studio that has the weight of robert's future behind it. the cast - those below middle-aged, at any rate - ride on a kind of euphoric high that seems to be a side-effect of the oppressive tensions, a release that could be excused as them being high on their own innocence: this is big, this is going to be big, as big (if not bigger) than _scream_ and _i know what you did_ with kevin behind the script and robert behind the camera.

even elijah can use that excuse; he's been living on a hotel on a floor full of young men and women who aren't his mother, a rare occurrence thus far in his life, he's having a shitload of fun. they congregate in the one room each weekend that doesn't have early-morning shooting at the other end of it, and this one is no exception. there's a few pick-ups for scenes with more detailed prosthetics coming up in the next couple of weeks, but otherwise the detention is nearly over, they're ready to split, go their separate ways, disappear back into the crowd again on the monday morning of their careers.

or hopefully not.

"this had better all pay off, man," josh grates, after a particularly impressive swig of vodka. he speaks the voice of all their jittery, anxious anticipation. "if not..." and leaves the rest unspoken. it hovers in the air and in the nausea in their stomachs, already this early in the evening. he completes the sentence with gestures instead of words, fishing in the breast-pocket of his casey-esque (though, elijah admits, more stylish than casey could ever hope to be) shirt and drawing out a small packet of hand-rolled cigarettes, smell pungent as he pulls open the press-lock on the clear plastic baggie.

*

the next morning elijah chokes on his first drag of a clove cigarette, josh's laughter crunching through the earnestness of elijah's coughing, echoing dully in the dense, closed air of the hotel room. the window isn't open but the blackout curtains were never shut, and he can see his future out over the balcony. the view is ruffled, lightened by the gauzy white fabric hanging still in front of the glass. he will look back on that morning and always think that it was josh, josh that first led him astray.

* * *

3.

it's fucking cold in canada, cold enough to make elijah want to pull his hoodie up and over his head every time they have a scene out of the studio, but of course it's just his luck that he was left with a fucking sweater and jeans jacket or something else as similarly... summer-y. a fucking _gun belt_.

franka grins wolfishly when he bitches about it to her; he might be a california kid but this is probably like a tropical holiday for her, where she's from the part of europe that always make him think of christmas cake decorations. she plays up her role as the dumb tourist, as if having an accent dulling her words means shaving off the sharp edges of her intelligence. elijah can see through the disguise, though.

he brings her flowers, wine, gifts; her eyes glitter behind cigarette smoke as if they can see more than she's letting on, she shows her teeth and makes him shiver. her skin is rich brown, her body svelte in the shadow of night and the dark corners of her body smell like forest and earth and fur when elijah buries his face in them.

*

it takes a moment for her face to drop its masking sneer when the call to _cut!_ rings out, and elijah's heart pounds upwards like she's never done that to him before. _eat me_ his mind babbles later, as her teeth tear at the delicate, cold-stung skin of his throat. _eat me all up._

* * *

4.

it's not til a persistent hunger starts to gnaw at his belly that elijah even thinks to look back towards where the boom ought to be looming over their set that he realises they're lost. his heart speeds up and the wind whipping up off the ocean and up the cliff suddenly feels strong enough to dash them off and careening onto the rocks. macaulay's voice, still adamantly childish, pushes back towards him from further behind as he calls out orders to the imaginary soldiers of their imaginary fort. when elijah turns to look back at him, the sun glances and blinds him before glowering at shoulder level.

by the time they've walked inland enough to get to a road it's dropped further and the landscape is suffused with a dull, military blue, the rushing sound of air and water further behind them. elijah's sure it's _south_ that they're meant to be heading but can never remember which side of the sunset that's meant to fall. his mom has a rhyme to remember it, it's linked in his memory to the steady vibration of road beneath car wheels as he falls asleep in the passenger seat, her low voice murmuring nonsensical facts to him, always trying to ground him with more knowledge the further she takes him from home.

macaulay is as short-tempered as any boy elijah's age and increasingly petulant the darker it gets and the further they get along the road without any sign or mark telling them they're on the right track. elijah doesn't realise how frightened he is until he whirls around to shout at the other boy, tears threatening to shake loose as he stamps his foot. macaulay's face is white with the black ribbon of road perpetually unfurling behind him, icy on the side of elijah's neck when they cling to each other.

they keep their hands linked as they start walking again. macaulay's fingers feel like bones in the damp grip of elijah's palm.

* * *

5.

elijah orders a burger and fries, orlando a tofu focaccia with a side of baby spinach. elijah drinks orange soda, orlando sends back his perrier because it's marginally flatter than if he'd opened the bottle himself. orlando's fork is dirty and waiters fall over themselves to replace the entire table setting. elijah eats with his hands.

before they leave the restaurant orlando checks his reflection in the silver service, runs fingers through his hair, brushes imaginary dust off the collar of his artfully grungy jacket. elijah wipes the grease off his fingers on the hem of his teeshirt.

orlando looks left and right and left again up the sidewalk and settles an expression of enlightened disinterest over his features. when they step into elijah's apartment he peers out the window and startles when elijah presses him against it from behind, fingers sharp and bruising the soft skin on his abdomen as his teeth scrape against the laundered fabric covering orlando's tense shoulderblade. "there's no need to prove it," elijah states amusedly. orlando refuses to turn around. "i know who you are."

**Author's Note:**

> http://hopeful-fiction.livejournal.com/22341.html


End file.
